


It's Not Something That Just Happens

by burlesque_articulation



Category: Borderlands
Genre: M/M, Prompt writing, cw: smoking, jackothy, jathena (mentioned)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 20:03:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7236535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burlesque_articulation/pseuds/burlesque_articulation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: "How can anyone not be afraid of love? + Handsome Jack and Timothy Lawrence." Describe this work in two words? Jack's insightful (for once).</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Not Something That Just Happens

Click of a lighter, the sound of the flame catching on the end, followed by a deep inhale, the immediate area now filled with the smell of cigarette smoke. It was a common routine of sounds that Timothy had grown used too hearing whenever he rolled over in bed next to Jack. The man bounced from one kind of addiction to another with little to no grace.

“Those are terrible for your health, Jack.” Timothy pointed out needlessly, eyeing the other man from under the arm he had placed over his forehead to help block out the lamplight.

Jack responded to him by flicking cigarette ash onto his exposed chest. “Mhmm.”

Timothy made a small sound of disgust in the back of his throat as he rushed to brush off the mess. “You are such a- a, _gah_ , forget it!” Continuing to flick bits of ash off the bed he huffed, “you are the worst.”

Jack just smirked, holding the cigarette between his lips now as he he flipped through the work notes and pages in his lap, a pen shoved behind the ear that faced Tim, and his thin framed reading glasses sitting nearly on the tip of his nose. Even with the mask, he still had one of the most attractive profiles Timothy had ever seen. He found himself tracing his fingers across his own similarly structured cheekbones. When Jack did did finally speak, it startled Timothy, breaking him out of concentration. “Looks like Athena and the moon lady got together.”

Timothy frowned at the seemingly random comment as he sat up and scooted closer to Jack, resting his chin on the other man’s shoulder as he peered down at what was in Jack’s lap. Timothy scowled, “are you reading my mail?”

Jack gave a noncommittal shrug, which was slightly impaired by Timothy’s chin digging into his one shoulder. “Well, you _are_ technically me, so…”

Timothy made a disgruntled noise, yanking the letter out of Jack’s lap and quickly scooting over to his side of the ridiculously large bed where he spent a moment reading over it, and look at the attached photo, his expression eventually softening. “They look so happy together… How do think they managed it? I mean, they met around the same time we did, right? And they look so… well, they really look in love with each other…”

It was a moment before Timothy noticed that Jack was eyeing him over the tops of his lenses. “Are you seriously comparing them to us?”

“I- what? No! No, no, I was just _saying_ how we all met around the same time.” Timothy felt heat rising in his cheeks as he started folding up the letter neatly. “I mean, it wasn’t that long ago, and well, I mean being in _love_ like how they _look_ \- love in general seems like a scary thing! It’s not something I could imagine someone just jumping into or… whatever…” He’d been babbling, trying to make a matter better, and likely only making it worse.

To his surprise, Jack smirked again, shaking his head and returning his attention to his work as he took another drag off his cigarette. “Listen kid, I can tell you that there’s no way anyone cannot have some amount of fear when it comes to any kind of emotion that’s held towards another person. Of course most of that fear does tend to come from misreading a situation. And ’love’ is definitely not something that just happens, or something someone chooses to just jump into, and it should be something that scares the crap out of you.” He took another draw, his demeanour changing slightly as he gave a half hearted gesture towards the sheets, “now tuck yourself in and go to sleep, I’ll be needing you to cover a meeting for me tomorrow, and I need you to be awake and listening for it. M'kay, pumpkin?”

Although he nodded, Timothy was still going over everything Jack had just dumped on him as he snuggled under the covers. “Goodnight, Jack.”

“Night, kiddo.” Came the reply, followed by a long exhale of smoking. Watching it fade into the air was the last thing Timothy did before finally nodding off for the night.

**Author's Note:**

> This is like, my favourite jackothy prompt that I had the pleasure of writing, to be completely honest. I'm just very proud of how it turned out, y'know? Anyways, writers' block still sucks, lmao. At least I'm giving the jackothy tag on ao3 some love because of it, yeah?


End file.
